Thursday, May 26, 2011

Day 3 Challenge: Sweet and Sour Beef

After potato and pasta, I though doing Asia with rice would be nice.

Taken from quick stir fry chapter on -still- Jamie's Ministry of food, this recipe originally using pork instead of beef. We don't eat pork, but I guess beef will do just great. And I never cooked with pineapple before, so diced a can of pineapple was hard to me, not that I don't like doing it, I merely capable to dicing without putting some on my mouth. Bad bad chef!

Based on my experience, for 4 serves,

you need:

* sea salt & freshly ground pepper

* 350g Jasmine Rice (original recipe using Basmati rice)

* 400g beef fillet, dice.

* 2 small onion, peel and dice.

* 2 red pepper, deseed and cut into dice.

* about 4cm of fresh root ginger, finely slice.

* 4 cloves of garlic, finely slice.

* a small bunch of fresh coriander, pick the leaves and put aside, chop the stalks.

* peanut oil (Jamie's used Groundnut oil, I could not find one in Jakarta. Sad sad sad..).

* 2 heaped teaspoon five spice powder

* 2 teaspoons cornflour

* 4-5 tablespoon soy sauce

* 1 tin of pineapple chunks (mine is about 450g)

* 3-4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

The original recipe also use round lettuce and sesame seed, which I skipped, simply because I had no time to get it from my local supermarket.

How to:

* Cook rice as directed on its packaging

* Pre-heat a wok or large frying pan on high heat, once it's very hot add the oil and swirl it around.

* Add the beef and five spice powder, stir.

* Cook for a few minute until brown, move to a bowl, and wipe the wok with kitchen towel.

* Return the wok to the heat, when its rely hot add about 60ml of oil ad all chopped ingredients.

* Stir everything together for about 2 minutes, then stir the cornflour and soy sauce, let everything cook for 30-40seconds.

* Add the pineapple chunk with it's juice, beef and balsamic vinegar. Season with pepper and more soy sauce if you like (which I did)